The sinner who suddenly realizes God's love for him and then looks at his rejection of that love feels a loss similar to the death of a loved one. A deep void is created in the soul and a loneliness akin to the agony of death.
Interpretation
Realizing God's love after rejecting it leads to deep emotional pain and loneliness.
This quote expresses the profound emotional turmoil experienced when one recognizes the depth of love that has been rejected, particularly in a spiritual context. The analogy to mourning the loss of a loved one emphasizes the intense grief and void that can emerge, highlighting the significance of connection and the sorrow of loss, both in human relationships and in one's relationship with the divine.
In practice
During a sermon about love and acceptance, this quote can illustrate the pain of rejecting divine love.
I am not like a pebble on the beach - a grain of sand on the seashore or just one of millions of human beings past, present and future. No, I am a unique human being loved by God as if I were an only child - the only fruit of his creative powers.
I must not permit the evil capabilities of human nature to sour my faith in the tremendous good that is possible despite the frailty of that nature.
Our memories are our own, and we cannot blame anything or anyone in the past for any pain dwelling there. If we open the door to them or keep hashing over past incidents in our minds, we have only ourselves to blame.
Man can and does rationalize his sins. He finds reasons for all his weakness, invents excuses that first calm and then deaden his conscience. He blames God, society, education, and environment for his wrong doing.
Love has been defined, analyzed, explained and excused. It has been the cause of wars, feuds, heroism, martyrdom, inordinate passion, and beautiful friendships. It pulls two people of opposite temperaments together into a married state and permits them to live happily. It makes friends understand each other without the necessity of words.
Our lack of forgiveness makes us hate, and our lack of compassion makes us hard-hearted. Pride in our hearts makes us resentful and keeps our memory in a constant whirlwind of passion and self-pity.
No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.
I think my mission, if I could call it that, as a storyteller is to try and find ways to show how similar we are and not how different we are.
Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God. That share in it accorded to men is one of the reasons that Man is the image of God.
Time is a dream ... a destroying dream;_x000D_ _x000D_ It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas;_x000D_ _x000D_ It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls.
The shadow escapes from the body like an animal we had been sheltering.
I see the origin of the irresistible attraction of metaphor and analogy, the explanation of our strange and permanent need to find similarities in things. I can scarcely refrain from suspecting some ancient, diffused magnetism; a call from the center of things; a dim, almost lost memory, or perhaps a presentiment, pointless in so puny a being, of a universal syntax.
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